Abstract

As a key psychoanalytic concept, the unconscious designates a fundamental dimension of subjectivity and discourse. In the phenomenological tradition, the unconscious was also examined as the limit phenomena of conscious experience in Husserl’s work and has received further attention from subsequent phenomenologists. Against this background, this paper attempts to review and explore the development of the concept of the unconscious in the theoretical careers of Merleau-Ponty and Lacan. In the 1950s, influenced by Saussurean linguistics, both Merleau-Ponty and Lacan turned their attention to the relationship between the unconscious and the symbolic, thus forming a direct dialogue between these two influential trends of thought in the twentieth century. By comparing the theoretical similarities and differences between their work on this subject, this paper attempts to unpack different layers of the meaning of the unconscious across disciplines and offer an expended understanding of intersubjectivity.